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1934 is the hottest year on recordIn August 2007, Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org, noticed a strange discontinuity in US temperature data, occurring around January 2000. McKintyre notified NASA who acknowledged the problem as an "oversight" that would be fixed in the next data refresh. The warmest year on US record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place (source: Daily Tech, Climate Audit). What the science says...Steve McIntyre's discovery of a glitch in the GISS temperature data is an impressive achievement. Make no mistake, it's an embarrassing error on the part of NASA. But what is the significance? NASA's "Y2K" glitchContrary to many reports, the error wasn't a Y2K bug but a mixup over data corrections with the NOAA. NASA GISS obtain much of their temperature data from the NOAA who adjust the data to filter out primarily time-of-observation bias (although their corrections also include inhomogeneities and urban warming - more on NOAA adjustments). From January 2000, NASA were mistakenly using unadjusted data. USA temperature versus global temperature trendsWhat is often overlooked is the temperature adjustments only applied to temperatures in 48 U.S. states. As the USA comprises only 2% of the globe, this has had infinitesimal effect on global trends. The graph below (courtesy of Open Mind) compares the global temperature trend from before and after adjustments. Before the error was discovered, the trend was 0.185°C/decade. After corrections were made, the trend was still 0.185°C/decade. The change to the global mean was less than one thousandth of a degree.
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| © John Cook 2008 | |
The skeptic argument...